Not a huge increase if you take into account the fact that fees have increased by 2K

True, there's been a whopping 8% rise in the full fees this year. This probably reflects in part the fact that the cost of essentials like food, fuel and utilities has also been rising steeply. The problem is that we've all got to budget for these costs, and for most familes the one thing that hasn't been going up is household income - in fact for many public sector employees a combination of pay freezes and pension contribution increases means that disposable income has actually been reduced. In these circumstances even a modest increase in CH contributions is going to be a problem!

I seem to remember the HM reassuring current parents that our contributions would continue to be linked to assessed income rather than calculated as a fixed percentage of the full fees as set out in the new bursaries policy.